Formed in their college heyday at Boston University, the Red Bucket Films collective — comprised of student directors Josh & Benny Safdie, Zachary Treitz, Sam Lisenco and Brett Jutkiewicz — was experiencing the end of the 2000’s as their most prolific era. Like the New Hollywood generation of filmmakers before them, they found a particular strength in numbers, operating as a singular creative unit despite its various members spearheading their own respective works. The recent Cannes debut made by the Safdie brothers had only emboldened them to push the limits of their mission statement, resulting in the creation of shorts like 2009’s THERE’S NOTHING YOU CAN DO: a fleeting slice of street cinema fused with performance art.
Shot in the weeks leading up to their 2009 feature, DADDY LONGLEGS, THERE’S NOTHING YOU CAN DO is a prime example of the Safdie narrative imperative: throw a mix of actors and non-actors into absurd scenarios with the hope of sparking some fireworks. This particular scenario, resulting in a three minute runtime, stages an angry encounter on a city bus between a crying baby, its mother, and the slick-suited finance executive with the gall to demand that the baby shut up. Benny Safdie dons the suit, gamely putting on his best “total jerk” impression while THE PLEASURE OF BEING ROBBED’s Eleonore Hendricks plays the aggrieved mother (a plastic doll plays the baby). Other members of the Red Bucket / Safdie social circle — co-writer Ronald Bronstein, producer Ariel Schulman and executive producer / creative personality Casey Neistat — are sprinkled in amidst the unsuspecting riders so as to better stir the pot.
The short’s technical approach reflects its particular needs as well as the scraggly strain of punk cinema that runs throughout the Safdies’ work to this day. Josh and Alex Kalma operate a pair of small digital video cameras, assumedly concealed from plain sight so the non-actors wouldn’t catch on. The handheld frames waver around claustrophobic closeups, swinging across a small sea of faces— each one more visibly perturbed by Benny’s temper tantrum than the (fake) baby’s. There is absolutely zero cinematic artifice to be found; no controlled lightning, no contrived compositions, no re-takes. As the furor onboard the bus escalates, the Safdies’ neorealist conceits take on an increasingly absurdist comic bent, and the brothers’ inherent talents gradually reveal themselves. This is the same sort of anxiety-riddled cringe cinema that gives GOOD TIME its jittery edge and UNCUT GEMS its white-knuckle, sicko thrill-ride appeal, only in a raw form unassisted by Hollywood star power or even decent catering.
As reinforced by an abrasive track by indie band No Courage laid over the credits, THERE’S NOTHING YOU CAN DO bears no commercial affectations or aspirations. It is the essence of punk cinema in the digital age— the product of a group of people going out into the world armed with an idea, a camera, and the chutzpah to boldly follow the plot wherever it demands to go.
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